It Starts With Me
By Ed Ellish
Psalm 51: 10-13
Keep creating in me a clean heart. Fill me with pure thoughts and holy desires, ready to please you. May you never reject me! May you never take from me your sacred Spirit! Let my passion for life be restored, tasting joy in every breakthrough you bring to me. Hold me close to you with a willing spirit that obeys whatever you say. Then I can show other guilty ones how loving and merciful you are. They will find their way back home to you, knowing that you will forgive them.
Looking at the world around us, we can so often get caught up in focusing on everything that’s wrong and the need for others to change. However, is it not perhaps me that needs to change first? After all, we all sin in one way or another and need God’s help to change and transform us.
It is for this very reason that David, a confessed sinner, pleads with God to create in him a new heart, because it is only from a place of health that we can honour God with our lives and be a life-giving testimony to everyone around us.
With this in mind, what can we learn from David’s conversation with God?
We must first acknowledge and confess our own sin to God.
We can then ask God to create a new heart in us. It is important to remember that, in order for our hearts to remain pure and passionate, we need to remain close to God in prayer and meditate on His word.
It is our passion, flowing out of being close to God as a lifestyle, that testifies to everyone around us about His great love, mercy and grace.
In closing, Oswald Chambers says, “The human heart must have satisfaction, but there is only one Being who can satisfy the last abyss of the human heart, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ.”